Atlantis lands safely, triumphantly ending the space shuttle program

At 4:56 a.m. CT the shuttle’s commander, Chris Ferguson, took the stick of Atlantis and at an angle seven times steeper than an airline guided her home to Kennedy Space Center for a beautiful nighttime landing.

Atlantis deploys its chute. (Smiley N. Pool/Chronicle)

And then its voyages were over.

“The space shuttle has changed the way we view the world,” Ferguson said moments after landing. “It’s changed the way we view the universe.”

“One thing’s indisputable, America’s not going to stop exploring.Thank you Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour and our ship Atlantis. Thank you for protecting us, and bringing this program to such a fitting end. God bless all of you, God bless the United States of America.”

You know it’s a big deal in the space community when, at 4 a.m., a line of cars stretches all the way from the center of Johnson Space Center back to NASA Road 1. And that was the scene this morning in Houston.

“I would just say I feel blessed to be a part of this program that I think really shows this nation at its best,” space shuttle program manager John Shannon told me earlier this week.

“I walk around and people are still completely focused on the mission and finishing strong, and since it was the U.S. space policy that we would retire the space shuttle once the International Space Station was complete, we put together a plan to do that. And the plan has come off exactly like we had hoped. So I do have an immense feeling of satisfaction that, if we had to end this program, this is the way we wanted to end it.”